


Half-Brother

by couqhdrop



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), Joseph: King of Dreams (2000)
Genre: Adoni, Biblical Reinterpretation, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Angst, Dream interpretation, Enemies to Friends, Family Angst, Gen, Genesis - Freeform, God - Freeform, Guilt, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationships, Post-Betrayal, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29748432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couqhdrop/pseuds/couqhdrop
Summary: And his brothers went to him and bowed low before him and said "We are your slaves."Then Joseph said to them "Don't be afraid. Can I do what only God can do? You meant to hurt me, but God turned your evil into good to save the lives of many people, which is being done. So don't be afraid. I will take care of you and your children."So Joseph comforted his brothers and spoke kind words to them.This is a short interpretation of things left unsaid in Genesis 37-50, which inspired the 2000s film Joseph: King of Dreams. Nothing more or less than that.
Relationships: Joseph/Judah
Kudos: 5





	Half-Brother

_"I am your brother, Joseph. The one you sold into slavery."_

That had been a turning point, hadn't it? 

Woodland-sepia eyes faltered open like a flash of eclipsing light, and to conform his sights onto a soul he had cast away felt like slaying himself.

Actalepsy. Wonderment. Mistrust. What was the word for what he was feeling forthwith?

_"Joseph...?"_

He saw it, he saw everything there, those Canaanite malachite eyes fastened on him leaving him utterly still. He was encountering the most dread, solace, and mourning all consolidated at that moment than he ever had, and while every other brother fell to his knees, Judah softly reached out to touch his face, hand trembling, the pads of his fingers brushing Joseph’s smooth cheek. 

"Is... is it really you...?" the man's voice was warbled and crumbled, and so was his face. Judah looked so... old. _Tired_. _Grave_.

"It's me," Joseph's suspiration crawled all through the room, and his sizzling tears lolled down his ruddy cheeks as if to convey two decades' worth of pain, "I promise..."

"Lord have mercy on us!" a combusted outcry of mortal terror did not miss Jacob's eleventh son, and their panic was justified, though Joseph couldn't bear to see them look at him as if he were some demigod. Half-forgotten dreams that had waded through his subconscious for years all came to fruition, seeing them bow on his polished palace floor like that. He hated it.

Judah was ensorcelled by this ubiquity, the phantom that haunted his dreams. This soul. His brother. Millions of moments he missed with Joseph, thousands of regrets, hundreds of grisly moments.

And the evil he had caused one of his own. A lost lamb, a lost brother. A broken heart. Too many dry tears.

"I..." he stumbled over his words and crumpled to his knees, curling beneath him as if God would finally strike him for his fratricide, "Oh, Joseph...!"

Joseph tactfully sank to his knees as well, and though his eyes were weepy, his heart pierced the glacier of their frozen-over bond, and he reached up a hand to thumb away his tears. 

"Don't cry... it's alright." Joseph spoke, though he was a hypocrite, as his eyes sparkled with so much despondency, liquid-sorrow. 

Judah did not care if Joseph would shirk away. He surged at him, embracing him with the might of twenty years of fraternal love long-since wasted between them, and though the vizier recoiled in fear that he was in for a beating, the next thing he felt was warmth. 

An embrace.

"Judah...?" Joseph susurrated, and the older began to weep. He lamented in his guilt, his shame, the millions of things he could have done better. 

"I'm... I-I'm sorry...! I am so sorry!" his back surged with brumous pain, "Oh, brother. My little brother!"

Joseph's copper curls, auburn in the volatile radiation of the sunset that swallowed him whole, spilled against his older brother's forehead, but he couldn't see his face. Tears wove along Judah's profoundly brown hair, sliding along each woodlike strand like a lyre's strings slicked with the ocean's waters, and Joseph found himself returning the affection. All he ever really wanted was this. Judah's embrace. His affection... that of which Joseph could barely recall to the days of his ochroid, halcyon childhood. Or what was _left_ of it.

They really had treated him cruelly, hadn't they?

No matter. It was over. He forgave them.

"I forgive you. All of you. Only if you will forgive me."

"You've nothing to repent for, Joseph...!" Judah's voice chipped through the brittle air, "You haven't done anything to deserve what we did... But we do not deserve your forgiveness."

"Too bad," Joseph smoothed his nimble fingers through Judah's hair, granular and nearly dry from a lifetime of field-labor, "Because I forgive you all. And I... I love you."

Had he really the _moxie_ to say such a thing when he was certain they hadn't ever wanted to say those words to him?

"We love you too..."

As Joseph's heart was ensnared by each of his eleven siblings winding their arms around him, offering him meager comfort after the suffering they had brought upon him, he felt the rushing blood in his jugular throb against the ball in his throat. 

He wept openly, almost like the child he was when he was traded away for coins. This was all he ever wanted. 

To hear them say _"I love you."_


End file.
